‘Practice Story Exchanges’ and their Creative Invitation to Informal Learning

Balancing Convivial And Competitive Civilizations

The educational challenge for the Australian Centre for Convivial Backyard Civilisation is to explore and reflect on conditions of conviviality in human society. Conviviality is about courteous, equitable, creative and compassionate living. Convivial living evokes pictures of people sharing a meal together. It is used here as a working image of mankind as a human family: at home somewhere in the world and its various eco-systems, inter-related, respectful and inclusive. It traces an oblique and possibly more humanistic line from Illich’s Tools for Conviviality (1973)

The convivial table is a working metaphor alongside images of contemporary competitive value: the champion winning in competition leaving the defeated unseen behind; the armed soldier giving security against attack from enemies; the scientist who discovers a new drug or physical correlation; the inventor who develops new technology; the entrepreneur who founds and builds up enterprises and becomes enriched as the enterprise and its stakeholders prosper often in competition with others who are toppled. These tend to give weight to heroic human individual and competitive achievement and not so much to collaborative and non-competitive human service.